Milkman - really struggling with it. Is it worth continuing?

[TheMagiciansNiece]

Am finding this very tedious and hard going. Is it worth sticking with?

Just came on to post the same thing. I think I’m going to give up. Life is too short.

I didn't enjoy it by the end but most of my friends did

I bought it via audible. Sent it back via audible too.
Wasn't wasting my precious credit on it no matter what the literary lot might say about it.

I had to read this as the book club choice, at first I really hated it but once into the rhythm of the way an 18 year old girl thinks I loved it.

I liked it so much I saved the last few pages as I didn’t want it to end.

Although when I attempted to recommend it to my DD she told me thisame book is one she gave up on as she couldn’t get to grips with it.

Not so much milk as marmite!

Someone suggested to me to listen to it, rather than read it. I am reading it in a slightly panicky, fast voice in my head and it seemed to work better. Am having one more crack at it.

I really enjoyed it, but I also struggled with it at first. I especially found chapter 2 hard going. Once I got to chapter 3 (after she leaves the French lesson) I really enjoyed it and am really glad I kept reading. It's a book I have been thinking about a lot after I finished reading it, really worth it.

I loved it! Have just finished it. Reserved a library copy thinking I probably wouldn’t get into it but actually I took to it after a few pages. I tuned into it in a way I haven’t managed to with other ‘stream of consciousness’ novels (I thought it was just me, Mrs Dalloway, but you must now accept there was fault on both sides). I just loved the way it took me right into her mind, and what it was like living in that place at that time as a young woman. It’s the first time I’ve ever been transported like that into that kind of environment and she explains so much about how the society works, and how repression works - and it’s scary how much of that sense of intimidation and anti-bookishness and second guessing yourself went on where I grew up somewhere without army occupation or anywhere near that level of physical violence. It has completely opened my mind to empathising with people living in a situation in my lifetime in a place not so far away from me but which I’m now a bit ashamed not to have given much thought to before.

And there are some really funny bits :)

Sorry about the inarticulate waffle but I’m so glad I found this book! I think if you don’t take to it then don’t fight through it as the style is what it is throughout, but if anyone is thinking of giving it a go definitely do so. I’m going to try her other books now.

I loved it - one of my favourite narrators and really funny and flowing. I imagined it as a gossipy, chatty, anxious young voice telling you a story with lots of digressions. It was genuinely moving at the end too. I read it on Kindle and would like to reread it at some point. But some people seem to not get on with the style - I’d give it a good go before giving up though just in case.

I also got it as an Audible and although I liked the narrator, I really couldn’t get into it as a book. Not enough happened to keep me interested, felt like I was listening more for the accent and the glimpses into Northern Irish working-class culture. If there had been more of a sense of that, I’d probably have persevered - but in the end I returned it so I could get my credit back!

I also got it as an Audible and although I liked the narrator, I really couldn’t get into it as a book.

Same here. Later I looked in the paperback in the library thinking I might try that option instead and saw there's no chapters, which I can't be doing with.

I thought it was one of the most brilliant books I've read in years. I read so much samey literary fiction, but it was genuinely fresh and original and thought-provoking.

But if you don't like it, don't read it. If you're finding it hardgoing in the early stages you probably won't enjoy it any more later on.

I didn't love it, but enjoyed patches of it enough to keep me reading - and it is incredibly sharp and funny in places. Then around p235 it gets really, really good and much easier to read for a while.

It's one of those books that I can't say I really enjoyed, but I keep thinking back over and would actually like to re-read at some point.

Well, I'm about halfway through, so maybe I'll stick with it (yawn)

I absolutely loved it. Could not put it down.

It probably helps if you have conversations about someone's cousin daughter's husband's neighbour as a preparation. DH struggles to keep up with so many relations. I immediately spotted that the number of brothers was not quite right.

Similarly to @Cornishblues I loved the complicated rituals of second guessing. Women in the book have way more responsibilities than men and power. I love it when the women get fed up or generally unruly. Or fall in love en masse.

The women with issues are my favourite. Especially when we compare and contrast their potential use of the church hut to that of the renouncers.

I am a little bit in love with the real milkman. I loved wee sisters and third sister and third brother-in-law.

I found it very hard to read, her style of writing is so different to anything I'd read before and I hated that nobody had an actual name! But I stuck with it, got into the flow of it and ended up really enjoying it. So, I'd recommend it but with a warning that it's hard to get into but worth sticking with!

I haven't got very far into it yet. I'm not finding it an easy read but do like the way that it conveys the claustrophobia of that kind of society where you are continually having to guard what you say.

There was an interesting discussion of the book on A Good Read on Radio 4.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00027n8

Really impossible to describe how much I'm enjoying this. (Have just passed conversation with best friend.)

I've never encountered any writing quite like this - though there are things it's similar-ish to. The way she maintains the absurdly heightened rhetoric is astonishing and hilarious. Particularly with regard to 'wee sisters'. It's wonderfully complex and intense and wry. And there are things in it I've never read anywhere before.

Completely in love with it and don't want it to end.

How sad am I?

I thought it was a thread about a milkman delivering your milk-
I gave mine up because he was always late and my milk sat out all day

going away to get a life

Couldn’t finish it at all, though it has gotten me interested in the modern history of Ireland, at least.

The way she maintains the absurdly heightened rhetoric is astonishing and hilarious. Particularly with regard to 'wee sisters'. It's wonderfully complex and intense and wry.

Yes, all of this! I think what's brilliant about it is that incredibly deadpan way that totally absurd and surreal things are treated as if they're quite ordinary. Like the parents who abandon their children and become ballroom dancing champions and then become kind of hero figures to the neighbourhood's kids. Or the woman who goes into clubs and puts poison in people's drinks, and nobody ever tries to stop her or report her to the police. It conveys, like nothing else I've read, how it must feel to live in a society that is effectively run by terrorists and dominated by an irrational hatred. The fact that she never names the place or the people somehow adds to that sense of absurdity.

Yes. And one thing I'm just realising (supposing it runs through to the end of the book) is that descriptions of truly gruesome horror are deflected (is that the right word?) towards animals. With people we only hear that they're dead - dogs and cats however ...

Finally finished - after numerous interruptions. This is just one of the cleverest, funniest, wisest and most original things I've ever read. It's been a while since I came across something I wanted to recommend to everyone I know - and books that win prizes so often turn out to be disappointing - but I don't see how anyone could be disappointed by this.

As someone above indicated - it's a truly astonishing portrayal of the psychological effect, on an entire community, of a period of violence and terror. (I wanted to say lawlessness - but it was the dominance and complexity of unspoken laws that did the damage.)

Absolutely the definition of 'enrichment'.

Oh god I hear you, A friend posted on Facebook that she was looking forward to reading it, a mutual friend commented that she struggled with it, I commented that I only finished it because I'm stubborn. Cue everyone else raving about it...clearly I'm a bit thick and just didn't get it...

I loved it but my Dad's family are Northern Irish and I could just hear my Aunt's voice as I was reading it. I loved the roundabout way of getting through stories and the dark dark humour. I think of her every time I find myself reading while walking.